Neville approached his hostess and thanked her for the evening and the invitation.
"I'm delighted you approached Griffith, sir. We are happy to have you in this happy season. Lady Penelope is a good friend of mine and I was distressed to hear of your injuries, but delighted to see you well."
"Thank you, my lady." Had Penn told the countess of his French inheritance? And did Del know, too?
"I believe, sir, you have much to plan in this new world you have won." The lady focused on him with kindly sky blue eyes. A force to reckon with, she was. "May you win more."
He grinned at her and bowed over her hand. "I appreciate your support, madam."
"Do have a good night, Major Lord Bromley."
"I shall try," he said and left her to other guests who wished to bid her good evening.
Then before he asked a footman for directions to the orangerie, he bounded up the stairs to his chambers. His valet Farnsworth would be waiting for him.
Del had never expected to see Neville Vaughn again in her life. For two years, she'd shut him as far from her mind as she could. She'd prohibited anyone to speak of him or write of him. Oh, yes, her sisters and many friends and acquaintances could have, would have.
The most conspicuous of these was Lady Penelope Goddard, Neville's cousin. But that lady was also a good friend of Aunt Gertrude's. A frequent visitor here and at Marsden Court in London, Penn had been a dear not to mention Neville. But how Penn knew of the ban, Del could only surmise. She personally had not demanded silence of her. Perhaps her aunt had. Nonetheless, Del wondered if Penn was somehow involved in ensuring that Neville was invited here.
Where was he?
She wanted this over and done.
Pacing before the wide glass-paned doors to the veranda and the parterre, she inhaled the cool air of the room. The gardener had brought in the potted fruit trees and shrubs for the winter, the greenery a subtle fragrance. She traced circular patterns on the frosty panes and dreaded this encounter with the man she had once loved to distraction.
"Good evening," he said from the threshold to the hall.
She whirled to face him. In the faint light of the one candle she'd brought with her, he appeared to her in shades of grey. As if he were still the apparitions of her day-dreams, he seemed to be all red Guards uniform and white trousers. Even his auburn hair was less vibrant. As he walked toward her, his halting step waylaying him, she realized what the war had taken from him.
Vitality. Youth.
Indeed, as he came closer, she noticed the threads of grey in his lustrous red hair. The lines at the corners of his eyes. The tight slash of his marvelous mouth.
"Thank you for coming," he said to her when he was nearer.
"We'll be in company for the next week. I would be less than courteous not to receive you and discuss our past."
He winced at her last word.
"Do sit," she said with a hand toward one of the two white iron settees. He needed the accommodation and she would be cruel to make him stand for this conversation.
"Thank you, no." He stepped closer to her.
She drew into herself, lest he touch her. "Very well. Say what you wish."
"I hope this will not be the only time we talk."
She placed the candle holder down upon the table. "I will be proper toward you, sir."
"Neville," he corrected.
She cleared her throat. "I would not shame my aunt or Griff by rudeness toward any guest. You must understand my surprise that you've come here."
"I do. But I doubted you would receive me otherwise."
"On that, you are correct."
"I know you've no reason to welcome me or even visit with me," he said. "But I've come with good intentions this Christmas season."
"Oh?" She put a hand to her throat. "Intentions to do what, sir?"
He narrowed his soft grey eyes at her. "To apologize."
"I see."
"To make amends."
"Good of you. But you needn't."
"I do." He stepped closer and took her hands in his warm ones.
She tried to pull away.
He hung on. "Oh, Del. What happened years ago at that house party of the Crawfords was a nightmare."
She stared at him. How true.
"I went, as I am certain you must have, to enjoy it. I had two weeks leave of duty at home and I went intending to do nothing but visit with my friends." He swallowed hard and stared at the floor. "Tolburton and Morrissey invited me to attend. They died at Quatre Bras."
Grief hit her anew. Those two men he mentioned were jovial fellows. At the same small house party of her neighbor where she’d met Neville, she had danced with both men, played cards with them and laughed at their jokes. "I read their names in the casualty lists. My condolences, Neville, on their loss."
His gaze caressed her hair, her lips, her eyes. "Though we have seemingly won the war, there is much we've lost."
She saw what else he had lost. The absence of it lived in the dullness of his eyes. Optimism—a buoyancy—had once lit him from within. That one quality had drawn her to him at a party filled with other young men, other possible suitors, other potential lovers. "I have no idea what you have faced. I never can. But I notice that Griff is more brittle. I see Alastair…adrift. I haven't yet learned what is wrong with him, but I know he disappeared for months. However he survived and lived to return to us can't have been easy. Whatever it is, I am horrified to know he faces challenge that we cannot comprehend."
"I doubt he does, either. He has an injury to his head, his mind, Del. I know little, but he does have headaches, lapses of memory. He may take years to recover, if ever."
"Frightening, isn't it?" she whispered.
He stroked her fingers.
"Tell me about your injuries," she said and he blinked at her. Tears were in her voice.
"Two Frenchmen were poor shots. One took a large piece of my boot and a smaller piece of my foot. The other took a knick from my knee. I regret to tell you that I do not dance as well as I used to."
She squeezed his hand. "But you loved it so."
"With you, yes."
"You will do it again."
"Dance with you?" he asked with the lift of his brows and a twinkle in those arresting eyes of his.
How could she say no? "With me."
"I look forward to it."
As do I. She rushed on, ignoring her own weakness to agree to such a thing as dancing in his arms. "Christmas night is to be a grand ball. Aunt welcomes more than one hundred neighbors, plus those here for the week's party."
"I look forward to it. I did like parties. And I do hope you will reserve a dance for me, stilted as it may be."
"We'll practice!" Oh, she was a fool to say such a thing.
"Will we?"
"Of course." She couldn't take it back now, could she? What would she become? A tease? A flirt? The very thing so many thought she was…but was not.
He lifted her hand and kissed the back.
She snatched it away. "Please don't."
"Del, I did not know my father would appear at that party and announce my engagement to Carolyn."
She bristled. "I must go."
"Please listen."
What held her in her place? A hope she might think better of him? A desire to believe him? Oh, that was so foolhardy.
"I had no idea he would demand it. No idea he'd signed the papers to accept Carolyn's father's money and land in the settlement."
"Yet, you let him order you to do it."
"I did."
"You were of age, you could have refused."
"You may think so, but that was not the case."
"Why not?" She had to learn.
“There was too much money at stake.”
"Ohhh." She put a hand to her cheek. Her father had lost every pound he owned to dozens of gamblers. Worse he lost his good name as well when alcohol took his mind and his integrity. Bankrupt, he became a laughing stock. When he died, his titl
e and estate went to the next male kin, as per the entail. His three daughters were left without a penny or a home. "Money. Again."
"He was in debt. Look at me. You understand debt."
"Yes." She sucked in breath. "Oh, how I do."
"I regret to bring it up, but you sadly do know that men lose money—significant amounts—at the table."
She nodded, unable to speak for the knot in her throat. "I do."
"And I needed some of the money my wife’s father gave in her settlement."
She stared at him, appalled, paralyzed without a right to ask why.
"I had run through my salary. I was in debt to friends, colleagues."
She recoiled. Neville was like his father? Hers? Irresponsible with money?
"It's not as you think. Not entirely," he said with sadness. "I had spent thousands on campaign paying the local peasants for food for my men and fodder for the animals. That plus the fact that I finally had an opportunity to buy my promotion. I deserved the higher rank. I'd performed well in battle and I had recommendations from my superior officers. But my father would not give over the sum I needed to clear my name or make my future."
"Oh, Neville. How terrible."
"Exactly." He blew out a gust of air. "He held back. Using my needs for his own ends. My father wanted something more than my promotion for his money."
"I don't understand."
"Carolyn's father was his arch enemy. He had married the woman my own father wished to wed when he was quite young. Carolyn was their child and my father wished to bring what was left of his beloved into the family."
"Oh, surely, that's—"
"Ridiculous? Obscene?" He sneered and nodded. "It was. He assumed Carolyn must certainly resemble her mother. How wrong he was. When he saw her, he stood in the middle of the Crawfords' library and laughed hysterically. Carolyn was a brunette, petite, quiet, shy. My father's ideal had been tall, blonde, evidently quite voluptuous and very forthright. He was foiled."
Del's mouth dropped open.
"His orders stood. I had to marry her or I'd have no payment of my debts. No means to feed my men. No new commission. No new uniforms for me. I'd be disgraced in the eyes of my men." He dropped her hand and turned away to hobble to the settee. He sat, leaning forward, his elbows to his knees.
She went to him and put her hand to his shoulder. "Tell me the rest."
"I left that library and went to find you and tell you."
She remembered the horrid confrontation between them.
Neville had stared at her, unblinking, his face white. "We cannot marry, Delphine. I was wrong to propose to you without my father's consent."
He'd gone on, saying words she did not hear and could not recall. She remembered standing like a piece of marble, unfeeling, unthinking until he had excused himself and left her to herself.
Now he ran a hand through a shock of his hair. "I married her three days later by special license and by her own request, I took her away from her father and never let her near mine. I set her up in a small house I rented in London and returned to the Continent and my men."
"And did your father honor his promises?"
"He did. Angry as he was, he saw he'd made a fool of himself. That said, he was, for once in his life, proud of me. My career. And so he gave me what I asked and we did not speak ever again. When I learned last year that he had died, I was without emotion. Only lately do I grieve for what he might have been."
That Del understood. "I have had the same progress in my own feelings for my father."
He sat back, fingering the top of his cane. "Before he died and Carolyn too, I thought often of this meeting between you and me. I had no idea how to arrange it, but I knew I must apologize. For your sake."
"And your own." She saw that Neville was the victim of his father's foibles, much as she was of hers. "I'm glad you've come. Thankful that you told me this." It helps to ease the pain of it.
"Might you ever forgive me?"
"That seems more possible than before," she told him with compassion for his challenges.
"Then perhaps we might even become friends?" he asked.
"I will try," she said. This rapport with him after all that had passed between them gratified her. But it also upended so much of what she'd been left to believe about his nature. That disturbed her. She rose. "I must go up now. We're helping Aunt Gertrude and we have much to do tomorrow. The greenery cutting begins early in the morning."
"I hope we can talk again."
She stared at him. "Why?"
"We have much more to say to each other."
"No, we don't. You've told me what you must. We are…quite finished. Good night."
Thank heavens, he did not stop her.
Picking up her skirts, she scurried down the hall headed for her chambers. As she took the stairs, she heard murmurs of people in conversation. That was to be expected. This was a house party with twenty-odd guests in the house, all hopefully entertaining themselves with one diversion or another.
She sank back against her door, relieved at the solitude. She should ring for her maid Mary to help her out of her clothes, but didn't want the company.
Slipping out of her shoes, she padded into her bedroom. Throwing wide the drapes, she considered the dark blanket of the sky. How many times had she looked up and seen his face when he told her he could not marry her. How often she'd recalled his misery, the dull pallor of his grey eyes, the bitter turn of his lips.
They'd met only five days before in her friend's library, an accidental meeting late at night in which each sought the same book.
"I couldn't sleep," she'd told him. "And I didn't pack my books."
"You like Shakespeare's sonnets?" He looked up at her as she stood on the library ladder. She had her hand on the spine of one of the Bard's works.
"He's eloquent and funny."
He threw back his head to chuckle. "A funny poet is rare."
She remembered smiling at him. "I wish I were."
"You write poetry?"
She blushed. "I would not call mine that."
"I'd like to hear it."
"No, you would not!" She laughed as she removed the small book from the shelf. "I'll take this and bid you good night, sir."
He reached up and took her hand to help her climb down. "Come live with me and be my poet."
"And I will all the humors prove."
"Hmmm." He pretended to think of another line, wincing.
She rushed to adapt Christopher Marlowe's famous poem for him. “But o’er valleys, groves, hills, and moat, I find I cannot move."
The two of them laughed as he applauded.
"With that," she said with a curtsy, "I will now escape with my cheeks red."
The next afternoon they saw each other at an al fresco luncheon.
He pressed a folded paper into her hand. "I wrote you a poem. Do read it later."
Surprised, she slid it into the pocket of her day gown.
Each morning thereafter at breakfast, they traded poems. Each day they admired each other more. The day before they were to return home, Neville proposed marriage to her. She accepted.
Hours later, after his father had arrived suddenly at her friend’s home, Neville had come to her and announced he could not marry her. He’d ended their idyll. And she’d vowed never again to fall in love with any man.
She snapped the drapes closed.
How she'd cried. For days. Weeks.
Perhaps she'd been too young to really be in love. Seventeen. And never enchanted with a man before. But never had she been courted or never taken an interest in any man romantically. Did a woman have to be eighteen or twenty or thirty to truly judge men, understand them or love one? She knew of many young women who married men they had met once or others who were forced to marry men whom they did not respect, nor ever would.
She dropped her shawl to a chair. Brushing down the shoulders of her gown, she struggled to step out of it. Hanging it in her wardrobe, she went to he
r bed and threw back the coverlet.
Neville was noble to come to explain events to her and apologize. It did not change the past, but it did apply a balm to her old sorrow.
She flung herself on her bed. The truth was she loved seeing him again. She ached for what he'd endured at the hands of his father. She squeezed her eyes shut, sorrowing at his wounds, enduring his disabilities for the rest of his life. What he'd suffered was beyond her understanding.
She flung her arms out and shook her head.
Tears stung her eyes. She brushed them away and punched her pillow…and struck something harder than feathers.
She sat up, reached under her pillow…and pulled out a little red leather book.
She smiled at the title. The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. She opened it and ran her fingers over the pale parchment.
Her tears dribbled down her cheeks. Drops struck the precious pages and she whisked them away.
The book she clasped to her chest.
And a folded paper fluttered to her lap.
Handwritten on the outside was her name in Neville's handwriting. From all the verses he'd written to her that week when they traded poems, she'd recognize his script anywhere.
She unfolded it. In his perfect flowing hand, he'd written a few lines.
“‘Love is not Time's fool…’”
But food for thought…
And brooders not.
She barked in laughter. This line resembled so many silly ones they'd made up and added to anything they couldn't readily work into a rhyme. Beneath this, he'd added the legitimate verbiage.
"Love is not Time's fool.
though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom."
The two of them had often abused the poor Bard's work. But this one carried the message that struck her for its relevance to their relationship. Time—the brevity of their friendship—had long been the reason she should have dismissed his importance to her. Time—the resumption of their relationship—should now be reason to accept his explanation and apology. Time—the next week—would allow her an opportunity to know him better. If she chose.
The Viscount's Only Love: Christmas Belles, Book 2 Page 5
